Tag Archives: division

A pleasantly mild November afternoon in the garden saw me attempting to control some garden thugs that really have got out of control: phlomis russeliana, with its spikes of tiered pale lemon flowers in summer and impressive seedheads in the winter garden, and a lavender-flowered aster with ambitions to take over the world – well, one particular flower bed at any rate! I bought it from a plant fair at Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill garden and, to be fair, the nursery owner did say it could have thuggish tendencies. Annoyingly I can’t remember the name of the species, and the label has long since disappeared. Strangely enough, I first planted it in a border with poorish clay soil, running alongside the boundary hedge between my garden and my neighbour’s, and it was remarkably well-behaved in that location. It isn’t prone to slug attack (always a good thing next to a hedge, especially when the neighbouring garden isn’t cultivated…), and gives a long-lasting splash of colour throughout autumn. However, when I relocated a clump to the richer flowerbed in front of the house, it soon gained delusions of grandeur, so much so that it was swamping everything else! My Japanese anemones didn’t see the light of day this year and basically nothing else that flowered after midsummer got a look in. It had to go!

Anyway, mission duly accomplished on both counts and I’ve risked planting some of the asters where the phlomis were, under the apple tree, in the hope that competition from the tree and a shadier spot will curtail their growth – while still giving a beautiful display of lavender flowers in the autumn. The phlomis didn’t add much to that area and were self-seeded in any event. I like them on my dry and baked island bed in full sun, but that’s where they can stay.

Fabulous colours still in the garden at this tail end of the year, from the bonfire reds and oranges of Cotinus Grace, to the muted, but no less appealing shades of azaleas, asters and hydrangea Annabelle, and the deep scarlet of the crab apples….

On a more frustrating note, I’m STILL waiting for a knee operation to reconstruct my ACL following my ski injury back in March, and am feeling increasingly thwarted that I can’t do what I want to do in the garden. This weekend I had hoped to take out a large lavatera plant that had died in the prolonged heat and drought of this summer. I suspect they’re short-lived anyway and it had flowered its heart out for a good few summers. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn’t manage to dislodge the root, and soon realised that it was doing my knee no good at all to keep on persevering. It will have to wait for one of my sons to come home and apply a pickaxe and some brute force…

Still a successful weekend – at this time of year, a dry weekend definitely counts as a bonus 🙂